Apple’s BROKEN AI Promise, M4 MacBook Air Review, iOS 19 Redesign

You can handle the truth. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Huge show this week. We're reviewing the m four MacBook Air. Me and Jason have them in hand. I've been testing them. And the m three iPad Air. But the big topic this week, Apple Intelligence, which is officially delayed. John Gruber wrote a whole dissertation. Jason has thoughts.

Wow. I didn't how did I not know that?

I don't well, you know, I'm not like I'm not publishing it around out there, but

Hang on. I'm gonna put it on my calendar.

Well, exactly what I wanna be doing. Now I wanna be doing this podcast. I get I get to do it. I love making this with you and our listeners, and we all get to be a part of it. So, yeah, today I turned 23. No.

You know, the other thing that happened today, we, like, that we pulled up this morning and our kids, like, about lost their mind is that five years ago today, exactly, we went and picked our kids up from school because it shut down for, like,

two That it so that was a weird It was

weird birthday for you, probably.

I remember that distinctly whenever I was trying to think, like, when did the world shut down? I was like, oh, it was my birthday

2020.

It was literally today, exactly five years ago. And can I just say thinking that that was five years ago breaks my brain?

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's why our kids lost their mind. They're like, wait, what? What?

Five years ago. So weird. Glad we're not during that time.

I know. I'm glad.

I'm glad I have a MacBook Air to talk about. Me too. And then, yeah. Well, alright, well, let's get into it. Let's get into it, because we have a bunch of some five star reviews.

From The UK.

From The UK.

Wow. There's a lot of levels there. It's like

There's a of levels there. B rating 48 from The USA. Cyclone Jack 62. Yeah. I know he's in our community as well from The USA. Battery percentage on. Mhmm. Phone in right rear pocket. We got another this is the second rear pocketer, I think, in in as many weeks. R u for reals with a z from The USA.

Nice.

That was the final year where the camera was flush with the back of the phone. Do you remember those days, Jason? I mean,

only be well, you know, the funny thing is the original iPhone, the camera wasn't actually flushed. There was like a little

There was a little lip.

Around

it. There was a little lip. And then the iPhone three and three GS was like a bowl that you can, you know You

could rock that thing back and forth,

get your baby to Yeah. Exactly. Then the four and five, those were the years with the flush flush back. Those were nice. Those were nice. Although I still think this this usually goes around, Jason. Let's just start with a controversy. What would you say the best iPhone design is to this day? I I always go to the iPhone four being in my, like, top three, maybe even top two. It's easy to say, like, the latest design because it's like, I mean, it looks great.

Yeah. But in in high so at the time, yes, but in hindsight, that screen is still so small.

Well, yeah, the screen was small, but the just the design of the phone, the rails on the edge, the glass back that was, like, single color, look good.

I got one right. Right.

Do you go over there? I have my mine's in a drawer. Should have even put

it out. That one's right there. I'm not going to get up and go get it because that will

be Well, was I'll ask this. IPhone four or five, which design did you The five had the two tone back. That's the only reason why I say the four. But the five had the bigger screen.

I think the five probably.

Yeah. Nobody's perfect. Alright. Let's talk about some

But listen, you keep calling me the other guy and yet reviews keep coming in. They're like, we don't know his name but we agree with everything.

No. I don't know. I haven't seen any of those. I haven't seen anything there. Alright.

Yeah. Are we still doing the movie quote?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I asked you last week. I asked you last week what it was. Okay. And the

Yeah. You asked me for, like, three weeks the previous three weeks because we hadn't done it.

I know. We had to catch up.

It's weird to me though that you picked one from a Broadway show this time.

What?

Okay. Don't tell me you don't know that a few good men was originally a Broadway play.

I gotta be honest.

Written by Aaron Sorkin. Come on.

I didn't know that. I didn't know. Oh, what?

You have a movie podcast.

Yeah. It's not a it's not a Broadway show podcast. You know what I'm saying? Although, sometimes it is.

I was gonna say.

Sometimes we sing some Broadway numbers.

You're being real generous with yourself there.

I didn't know that. I didn't know that. And then, of course, the quote is about Apple getting hammered about Apple Intelligent handling.

Yeah. It's fun watching, you know, Jack Nicholson yell and scream about Apple.

It's good. Intelligent. That's that's that's the that we should do a mashup. Okay. Let's talk about here's the this past week has been crazy because last week Apple released a bunch of products, announced them, then all the embargoes lifted or whatever, and now the products are out in the wild.

Well and I do like that the verge's take was basically, you know, a week is not enough time for us to actually review this.

That was

Too much computer. It's, like, too much

It's a lot of computer. It's amazing to see, like, the compile times or, like, exporting from compressor. Like, it's ridiculously fast, and they got ones with, like, one twenty eight or five twelve gigs of unified memory, so it's like, it can do all the things. Like, there is no there is no seal. Crazy fast. That's how that goes. Now, a device I do not have, but you have, and you actually wrote about was the iPad Air, the m three iPad Air. And, yes, unsurprisingly good.

Yeah. How how is it? Well, I'm curious. First, I wanted to do a little test. I have both an I an m two iPad Air

Okay.

From the previous year because I'm really lazy at sending things back and an m three. And I'm just wondering, can you tell the difference? Now Can you tell which one

is it? Okay. Wait. Well, can you one's upside down, but I think I can still tell I'm down. Wait a minute. Oh, logo. Yeah. There you go. There you go.

Sorry. Well, you know, it rotates, so to me, looks like it was correct because the screen was right. Right.

Now one's pink and one's blue. So I assume the pink one

Purple and one is blue.

Excuse me. The purple one, I believe, is the m two. Is that correct?

No. The blue one is the m two. The the purple actually, yeah, you should have known this because last week, I said, I hope they send me a sky blue Right. Because everything else I have is blue. So but the yeah. They're exactly the same is the point. Even the colors are the same. You could buy an m two in this color. You can buy an m three in the in the blue. They're exactly the same, but I don't I think that's fine.

Like Now you got the new Magic Keyboard Yeah. With the iPad Air, which is basically like the updated iPad Pro Magic Keyboard. Right?

Nope. It's not all. It's the old one with a function row.

What do mean?

Trackpad is still the same. Right? The trackpad is a physical trackpad, not a haptic or whatever

Interesting.

Stuff. And it's also not, metal on the top or whatever, you know, like the new. It's not the aluminum. It is basically the old Magic Keyboard with a better hinge. Right?

Because it's just less blank space at the top.

Physics is just weird like that, I guess. But, anyway but, yeah, it's great. Like, I don't

I

don't love I have a love hate relationship with the Magic Keyboard. It's the best overall typing experience on a keyboard for an iPad.

Right.

But it's like, I love the thing the thing I love the most about an iPad is how light it is compared to, like, a Mac, and then you put that thing on there, and it's heavier than a MacBook And you're just like, what are Why

are we doing this?

And so

yeah. Okay. Well, cool. I mean, nice. I the iPad Air exists. It's out there. Now I wanna get to the MacBook Air. Great. Because we're talk we're talking about Air. Here it is. We both have our MacBook Airs in sky blue. If you hold it at the right at the right angle Mhmm. At youtube.com/@primarytechshow. Go follow the show. It's right over there.

So I have a time machine backup that is just for review.

That's brilliant.

Yeah. Because I do this enough times that I just literally restore from a time machine backup. That's smart. It doesn't copy my whole Dropbox folder over, which is a terabyte. Right? Like, it doesn't copy all of the things I need, but it has all the apps that I want, and it has enough of my personal data that I'm like, can can use it as a normal machine Right. But without like, it doesn't have my whole photo, like, downloaded to it.

Right. That's smart. I I was about to do migration assistant, and then I saw in my old m three MacBook Pro, I say old, like a year and a half old, that it had Zoom installed, and I don't need Zoom anymore. I had to have that on there for something else. And so I'm like, I'm not gonna do migration assistant.

That's the reason.

That's the reason. But listen, like I focused forty five minutes and I was actually able to like speed run. I should have recorded it. Installing all the apps, moving the license keys because I try to install the least amount possible, you know. So it's kind of like, you know, you finally got compressor, audio hijack, whatever.

Uh-huh. Yep. One twenty. Yep.

So that I felt that a couple times, but not enough to bother me. The bezels on the MacBook Air are a little larger, which that I have to it'll be fine. I'm not usually comparing them side by side. But then I started I was just using it. I used it to edit a video in Final Cut.

Yeah. And you have a Mac Studio.

And I have a Mac Studio.

I mean, the this is I think, I I the MacBook Air, I well, the only thing I could come up with to talk about was the keyboard, so we can talk about that in just a minute. But the it's amazing. I think that the but it's just it's like it's been amazing for a very long time. Even the last Intel MacBook Air was amazing. Right?

It's amazing. It is amazing the the weight difference. Because you have a do you have a 14 inch MacBook Pro that you can compare? Yeah. Yeah. Is wild. The weight difference when you when seemingly, like, just looking at them, you think these shouldn't be that different in weight. And I need to look up the exact weights. And obviously, it is it is thinner. So and I I imagine that's battery, I guess, that's taken up the and the ports, maybe, like the IO stuff.

You saw what they did with the 13 inch iPad Pro, which is literally the width of the USB C port. So they they got a little bit of work they could do on that.

But That is true. I will say I missed or I was expecting MacBook Air to be etched on the bottom. So if you have a MacBook Pro, you know, it actually has MacBook Pro etched into the bottom of the of the thing, but they didn't do that for the MacBook Air. Is it too thin?

They eliminated it on the, you know, on the on the m one, it used to be right under the display.

Right. Right.

And they eliminated that as well. So

Yeah. Yeah. I just I I don't know. Maybe it's too thin. If they etch it in, they have to, like, sacrifice something. I don't know.

It's like Bono. You don't need the name. You just know. You just know who it is.

You just know. It's the only sky blue. We're gonna talk about the keyboard in a second. The sky blue color, it's it's very muted as everyone literally has said. It's it's fine.

It's basically the same colors as the shirt I'm wearing and Which is gray. I'm literally wearing the same color as I'm wearing my Sky Blue shirt in honor of

Look at that. Look at that. I didn't even notice you were holding the computer up. Literally. Literally.

They're exactly the same.

Blends right in. Now you had told me before I got mine, because you got yours a little early, that the keyboard is different. No one has Apple did not say anything. There's nothing official about it. But immediately, as soon as I started typing a few sentences, I I noticed, like, for some reason, the keyboard on the m four MacBook Air, and you said the m four MacBook Pro also. Right?

Yeah. So this has been the journey I've been on. When I got a when I got the m four MacBook Pro, review unit, which was a really rough time because they sent me a Mac mini, an iMac, and a MacBook Pro. And I'm not complaining, but it is just hard in in, like, what I do to review three different devices in the amount of time they give you for an embargo.

Right. Right. But have two days.

Yeah. And I had an m three max MacBook Pro. So any MacBook Pro things I wanted to do, I had a device that I was, like, gonna use. So but I used it, and I found that when I was writing, I way preferred to use the m four MacBook Pro. And I started thinking, like, this keyboard legit feels different. It feels much more tactile. It feels crisper. It just like I don't know what it is. I didn't think anything about it at the time. I just filed that in the back of my brain.

Same. I've not seen it anywhere. I'm now, like, going back and forth just doing, like, doodly doodly on each keyboard on my MacBook Pro and for each key is a little it feels firmer. Yeah. Like, it's less mushy, and so it and I I think that gives a little more, like, clickity, little more clickity.

But it's not necessarily louder.

It's not louder. No. No. No. Not louder. Just the feel. Yeah. The feel is, like, less Yeah. Yeah. A little crisper and it's very nice. Like typing on it. And maybe I'll do more writing finally. Write a newsletter. I write my I write my newsletter once a year. You can subscribe at beard.fm. So, you know, you're definitely not gonna get spammed on that newsletter. But, yeah, like, I think

it's spammed because you'll forget that you subscribed since it's been a year since you got the last You'll

think it is,

but it's not. It's not. You did subscribe.

You subscribed.

Two issues ago, three

That's right.

You subscribed.

Three years ago, you subscribed. This computer is wonderful. I'm glad I got the 13 inch. I was waffling between the 13 and the 15 And then, I think you told me this, but basically, like, if you're wanting a computer to be small and light, get the small and light version.

Yeah.

Makes total sense. Yes. The 13 inch does not feel super cramped. I mean, if you're editing video, sure. It's gonna be less you know, you have to work it out.

day HDR, burn out your retinas.

Well, the other thing too is like display wise, if the thing I want a great display for is editing video, well, listen, I could just strap some micro what is it? Micro LED mini Whatever. Whatever they are. The the micro OLEDs on my eyeballs with the Vision Pro, and there you go. You have it. So I got the lightest computer on my lap and the heaviest one on my face, and it'll

be great.

It'll be great. It's yeah.

It's it's it's like you took your $999 MacBook Pro MacBook and you turned it into a $5,000 contraption that requires two separate parts of battery an external battery.

Exact exactly. It's totally insane, but hey, it'll be exciting to work in that in that environment. So anyway, I love the MacBook Air. It's a great computer. I I still have, like, a couple days to decide. My trade in kit comes in tomorrow, I think. And so I have another day to change my mind, but I'm pretty sure I'm sold that I'm gonna keep the MacBook Air and send my MacBook Pro away. It's serving me well.

I think that for a lot of people who have a MacBook Pro, I I I would be very surprised if the MacBook Air couldn't accommodate those needs. Yeah. And I also think, yes, the MacBook Pro has it does have a better display. Absolutely. Like, if you comp like, if you compare them side by side, especially if you're watching, like, Apple TV or something like that on the app.

Sure.

And the and the other thing I I wrote about this morning, I that if you think about it, the MacBook the MacBook Air in 2022, which was the m two, was $11.99. They raised the price by $200. Today, adjusted for inflation, that MacBook Air would be almost $1,400, but instead they went back down to $9.99. It's a it's a steal. Like, I don't understand how Apple is, like, doing this, but it is like, they have they are being very generous in that.

We we talked about it. That'd to

see. And I heard I heard on another podcast someone saying they're gonna wait to see what happens with the Mac Pro before they buy one of them. Like, you're thinking about it too much. Just buy the Mac Studio now and and enjoy it. It'll be amazing.

I like how you said on another podcast I don't know. Because last episode, we mentioned his name 80 times.

I know. That's why I was trying to

be He didn't wanna say it this way.

I didn't want his Google alerts to be going off.

I'm not gonna ruin it. I'm not I'm not gonna say it. One thing I'm speaking about the price, and we talked about tariffs shortly in the last episode. Interestingly, the MacBook Air, I don't know if this is actually gonna focus on the words, but assembled in Vietnam. Yeah. And I actually tracked this through the UPS once I got the shipping notification. Yeah. Sure enough. Comes from Vietnam, goes through Hong Kong, but I guess the tariffs, because it originated in Vietnam, wouldn't affect this.

That's interesting, Steven. You're breaking some news here.

That's it. That is what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I I tweeted

my looked at the bottom of my MacBook Air before I wrote that article this morning.

Well, I'm just saying it says assembled in Vietnam, and I probably showed my serial number. I don't know if that matters on the the show, but, anyway. But, yeah. So that that might again, one of the reasons why the the tariffs might not be affecting this price. Great computer. It's great. The other thing you were mentioning, the display I stare at a studio display all day, which does not have HDR, which does not have ProMotion, and Yeah. It's fine.

Yeah. The MacBook Air display is not worse than the Studio display.

It's the same. It's the same. So it's like, I really should have no qualms about it. And if I and honestly, the best display Apple makes right now, of all their devices, Gwen Nelson said this on social media yesterday, actually the iPad Pro, the Tandem OLED.

Oh, absolutely.

A hundred percent. Display. And I I have one of those already. And so if I really want just the best display so I can watch a scene from Interstellar, which I I don't do regularly. But if I wanted to and I just wanna see the best display that Apple has to offer, well, I have that. It's the iPad.

And you have that Vision Pro thing, which is also a pretty darn good display. It's not quite as good as the iPad Pro, I don't think. But the nice thing about the MacBook Air compared to your Studio Display is that the webcam is about 17,000 times better. And it's not even great, but it is so much better than the Studio Display webcam. I logged on to this to record this podcast with Steven, and it it was on the studio display, and Steven's like, you should go back to bed. Like, what's wrong

with you? It just Jason's video when he first joined, I was like, what is going on? I was like, the white balance is off. The I don't know. Your background

I was in a dark cave. Yeah. Was real dark. Everything's fuzzy.

It was just because it was using studio camera.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Continuity camera listen. If you're gonna do any kind of video content, yes. Use continuity camera with an iPhone way more than the studio display.

I said that right in my review. I'm like, everything in one little section. I was like, yeah. They updated the camera. But if you do if you need your camera for a lot of things, you probably have an iPhone. Just use that.

Right. Alright. So that's the MacBook Air. Great. Leave us questions in the community post, social.primarytech.fm. We had some new members recently join, which is awesome. Over, like, 200 something people there, and we we are almost at 2,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is amazing. So listen, you know, there's my birthday. Not to pull that card, but I want you to go over to YouTube. YouTube.com/@primarytechshow.

Hold on. Before you move to, like, the software things

Yeah. Yeah.

I know you glazed over the Mac Studio, but I discovered something that did. I did not review a Mac Studio. They'd only send me things with the word air in them. I mean pro.

I guess

they send me pro things too, but they do not send me studio things.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which I think I got a studio display. Anyway, okay. I didn't realize this until I was listening. I think it was the most recent episode of upgrade where John Gruber foreshadowing was the guest. And that was a great episode.

stuff on that Yeah. They sew it together.

They do. It's just there's a bunch of Yeah.

Well, and that's you know, I listened to the ATP guys talk about the processes between the m three and m four and how three nanometer there's, like, you know, different process in the chip fabrication or whatever. And that's what I I was curious if the m three ultra is on one of the newer processes, the m four chips or on one of the old ones. And maybe that's a clue to say maybe there's a actually, it's not on the m three pro and max process. Maybe it's on something newer. So I don't know.

I I mean, you don't even really need an m three Max, do you?

Like No. Take it take it easy. Take it No.

No. No. I'm not being I'm not throwing shade, but I'm like, I'm sitting here with an m four Pro Mac mini, and Listen. It is faster than that m three Max laptop sitting over there. So, like

I'm sitting I'm sitting here with an m one max max studio, and it's amazing, and I I'm never waiting around.

And this Mac mini would smoke it, and so I'm just saying if you were gonna upgrade

No. I'm not gonna I need the ports. I need the ports. I use all the ports. We've got we went over this last week.

You're right. But do you know how many Thunderbolt docks you could plug into it? Three.

I don't I don't want more points of failure. No docks. Like, Edna mode. No caps. No docks. No. Alright. Let's talk about iOS 19 briefly and Sonos. A bunch of rumors have been coming out, basically, Mark Gurman. But I'm gonna use this picture because Mac rumors look it looks cool.

I am not so there are peep there there are two camps of people. There are people who think that eventually all technology things should change just so that they'll be different so that they can, like it's sort of like the endless scroll on Instagram. You need more content to just get that little endorphin thing going on or whatever.

Right. Right.

I don't like, I hear this about the Apple Watch. People are so insistent that the Apple Watch Apple is gonna be a failure if they don't do something to redesign the Apple Watch. And the way I look at it is, like, no. The Apple Watch is just the logical end form factor of what that device should be. Right? They might make a couple tweaks. They came out with the Ultra. They made the screen a little bit bigger, But I don't think it's ever gonna, like, suddenly be a square with flat sides.

Like Well, it's in MacBook Air. Like, what what more is going to happen to this computer? Like Right. It is so thin. Like, it is a display. It's a keyboard and trackpad and some ports. Like, I don't know where this is gonna go.

No. It's right. Exactly. And I don't mean may maybe it could conceivably get a little bit thinner, but it doesn't need to. It is it is the right form factor for this product, and that's great.

Right.

Resources going to the and it's like, when you think about redesigning software and I'm not a software engineer, but I feel like this is a pretty general principle. If you are going to and this is like companies changing their logo because they just feel like it's time to do a refresh. And the only people who are thinking about it's time to do a refresh are the people who, like, are inside the company and are just bored and need something to come up with to do. I don't think that iOS needs a redesign. Now it is true that, like, on the Mac, on the phone and the iPad, and then on the vision o and the vision pro, there are sort of three different design languages, but they feel appropriate for those user inter interfaces.

You know what? It's funny. The the circular design that everyone's saying, you know, is Vision and it's inspiring everything. I don't know if people remember. The Apple Watch exists, and it's had the circular icons forever.

Well, and I think that means sort of that frosted, slightly translucent kind of, like, hovering windows. But you have to have that on the Vision Pro because, like, you have to see through them and know that there's a wall there. Right? Like Right. I don't need that on my phone.

And people have been saying, like, the Apple invites app has kind of that newer design language, and that's where Apple is going. Listen. I'm also I'm not opposed, like, cool. Like, let's refresh some stuff. We can make it look even more modern, I guess. Fine. I think the bugs is really, for me, like, let's not forget the bugs, please.

Sure. But is you gotta ask yourself whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze because even with iOS 18, I think what was my phrase? There are people living in my house who were very upset about it even though there wasn't that much. But the control center was a huge change for someone if you're you're used to swiping down and all of a sudden the things you thought you were gonna see are in a different place. Even if you can rationalize that that change is better because someone like Steven can customize it and do all these different things.

Thank you.

But most most of the people using those 2,000,000,000 iPhones or whatever that are out there, you there's a real cost involved when you make those kind of changes. And I don't just don't know if it's worth it. Because even if you make it prettier, people are still gonna be like, yeah. But where's the button that I used to press to do this thing?

That is true. I think it's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. I'm not the average user.

You are an above average user. That's the exact quote I just wanna be clear.

I would change my email signature to above average user. So we'll see. I mean, Dub Dub's just a few months away. We might see invites coming out soon. And the last thing I wanna say before we get to Apple Intelligence and all that, Sonos, which was rumored to be developing a streaming box, canceled it.

I think this is mostly a function of the fact that right now they have an interim CEO who is trying to get them focused back on the things that actually matter. And maybe that would have been really cool, but this is kind of like the car project. It's not nearly the same scale. But Right. Like, Apple had a car project, and all of a sudden, they're like, oh, shoot.

Well,

no. Right? So it's not like this is going to fill a spot in the market. You have Roku, Fire, Chromecast at one end, and then you have the Apple TV. And then isn't there like a the NVIDIA shield

Yeah. Something like that.

And some other probably, you know, bespoke whatever things that, like, feed the things through the ether or whatever. But, like, I don't know. Like, it makes sense to me that this got canceled because I'm not really sure that it really had a spot.

Focusing on what you're doing well. Look at that.

Or or the things you're already doing terrible.

Right. Right. Focus on fixing those. Yeah. Exactly. Like your app. Talking about Sonos here. We're gonna get to the Apple Intelligence is gonna be gonna be a dissertation. It's gonna be I got some thoughts.

His got feelings.

I got feelings. I do. Before we get to that, wanna thank our sponsor for today, which is Green Chef. Green Chef is the number one meal kit for clean eating. And I have I have some pictures of a Green Chef meal that I made I'm going to reveal in a moment.

Is this the second time you've cut an onion?

It's like the fifth time. This is like the fifth time I've cut an onion. Let me look at that chopping skills. I don't know if those are good skills or not, but I cut it. I cut the onion.

I mean

I cut the onion.

Yeah. And you didn't cut your finger. That's that's

I didn't cut my finger. It is very difficult not to, but There we go. I probably should've used a bigger cutting board. Anyway, this is my green chef stuff, and then this was a it was a ground turkey, cream, onion, tomato soup. It has the queso fresca, you know, a little crumbly cheese in it. Was delicious. I made it all myself. No help from anybody, except from Green Chef, and everybody liked it. My kids liked it. My wife liked it.

Yes. And I'm try it's been a couple of weeks since we had a chance to do this last. So I was I know there was a, we did a soup that was actually very, very good. Yes. And I the thing that's weird about this, I'm this is a terrible, you know, endorsement because I can't remember what it was, but I do specifically remember that it was very, very good. Okay.

So, I mean, it's a good endorsement. It's just bad memory.

Just wish I could remember specifically. Listen. We okay. We have four kids. All of whom play sports. We don't even to eat dinner together that often. And so it's kinda chaotic in our house, which is actually what this is perfect for because it took like thirty minutes and everything we needed was right there, and it was fantastic. Exactly.

And that's I like it too. I like the compact nature of I don't wanna spend hours in the kitchen, and this Green Chef helps you just keep it all done and compact, know, get it done quickly. And the recipe cards make it easy to follow even if you're not a cook like me. So thrive all year with clean, easy meals from Green Chef. Go to greenchef.com/primary free and use code primary free to get started with free salads for two months plus 50% off your first box.

Ancho chicken soup. That's what we had. It

was delicious. Ancho chicken soup. There we go. There we go. That's that's the end of the read right there because Jason remember he remembered the meal. Okay. Big news. I'm gonna go through the timeline very quick. We're gonna go through time because as a company would do, if you're going to deliver some bad news, you do it on a Friday at the end of the day. This is what companies do.

It's called checking it out with the garbage.

Exactly. And that's what happened in a very strange way. Last Friday, the day after we published our last episode, Jon Gruber at Daring Fireball and two other news outlets, Reuters and CNBC. Right? I

think that's correct.

They all received a statement from Apple. So Apple didn't release anything first party. There was nothing in the newsroom. No interview. No nothing.

Yeah. That's that's the part that's not clear. What does that what do those words mean? And

What do those words mean?

Also, you remember the last time that they said something about, like, we'll be we'll complete the transition to Apple Silicon by the end of the year. It took him, like, a whole other year to get the Mac Pro.

Yeah. It was

There's one more, but that's for another day. Turned out it was, like, a lot of other days.

A lot of other days. The the biggest asterisk. So in the coming year, who knows what that means? Then we'll talk about the credibility even of that statement. So that was Friday.

Oh, I do. Absolutely. It's only been a couple years that that's not been the case.

It's not yeah. Exactly. So there was that, but also Apple removed the advertisement that was on their YouTube channel, and it was a commercial that had aired on TV, But the one with Bella Ramsey talking about the voice assistant personal context, they took that video down from their YouTube channel. So, I mean, it's been uploaded a thousand other places, and you could still see it, but they took that down, which I think is more unusual, for something like this. So that all happened between Friday over the weekend.

Yeah. A couple of things. So I was thinking after I read this, and I've listened to to Gruber talk about this on two podcasts now. He talked about it on Dithering, which is the twice a week fifteen minute podcast he does with Ben Thompson. And then also, again, on on the episode of Upgrade from Monday, he he, Jason Snell is bringing in some guests because his cohost, Mike Curley, had a baby.

And you

well, it's available for you to try. Like, there there are times when they'll have a thing where you can, like, you can try out the Apple Watches. They're real. They haven't shipped yet, but they're there. Like, you can actually touch them and you can test them out.

Right. Right.

So they could take their time on that to get it right. The problem is they promoted it as if it was real, and then they promoted it in a commercial like it was real. And then at the iPhone event, they talked about it again. And their

dog is in so many ads talking about

people rolling up the You're gonna show a clip of of Craig Federighi talking about it again at the iPhone event. And Grubber I like Grubber's point. Why was Craig Federighi the one demoing this? He is the software guy, but he is not the Apple intelligence guy. Right. And I I think I will be very surprised. This is the kind of thing someone will lose their job on.

So I wanna get I wanna talk about that aspect in a second. So this is a clip. And again, talking about how hard Apple was promoting this. This is from the iPhone event. So not dub dub. This is months later in the iPhone 16. Yep. Later. Yeah. So here's a clip of Craig Federighi. It's like thirty seconds. I'll put it in the audio version as well. But if you wanna see it, head on over to YouTube.

And there's so much more to come. Siri will be able to tap into your personal context to help you in ways that are unique to you. And it will be able to take hundreds of new actions in your apps, like updating a friend's contact card with his new address or adding a set of photos to a specific album. With Siri's personal context understanding and action capabilities, you'll be able to simply say, send Erica the photos from Saturday's barbecue, and Siri will dig up the photos and send them right off.

So after reading Gruber's article and watching that clip, which Gruber calls out specifically, most of the features that Apple touts is basically like a white screen with just text floating towards you. Yep. That's that's the feature being shown off. It's just in text. And then even the one the couple ones they talk about is like, send these photos to so and so. It basically just shows a video of, like, not someone holding an iPhone, but just like a three d rendered iPhone on

the generated yeah.

Computer generated thing, and it's just pictures being sent via text message. But it's not actually showing anything of the like, no physical because even in that same that was when Craig Futiger was talking about visual intelligence coming to the iPhone 16. And there were several examples of, like, hold the phone up to a concert poster, do visual intelligence, add it to your calendar. Point it at a dog, and it'll identify the breed. I did an entire video about all of that, which it basically does now.

e I think they might have. I think there was some or they gave a statement to somebody.

I think they gave a statement to somebody like like they're doing here. But this is not the first time Apple has failed in software and the first time they've broken a promise. And I wanna put this in the context of these other failings because in Gruber's article, this really feels like he is implying a shift in the company's culture that might affect it long term. And I am curious if, like, is it really that big of a deal, or is it similar to these other situations? And I'll point out a couple.

Yeah. So I think the mobile me one is interesting because that wasn't like they said, this service will do email, but it doesn't. Right? And they didn't demo you sending emails with MobileMe, but that's actually just not a real thing. It just it was poorly designed, and they just had to fix a bunch of back end stuff.

That'd 2023.

Yeah. When when and so this was, like, in the heat of the LLM craze, and Apple did not use the word AI Right. Once. Not a single time. In fact, they didn't use it until that fall when they rolled out the MacBook Pros at the scary fast event.

Right? That was the AI These are

the first devices designed for AI and whatever.

Yeah. Exactly.

Although it's funny because I was in a well, I'm not even gonna go there because it was off the record. So, anyway but I just think it's, like, it's interesting how they can, you know, wordsmith some of those things. But I think then you notice, like, they they realize at that moment, like, we have to do something. Because wall like, we are the largest company in the world, and our market cap is based on the fact that the iPhone is the most dominant consumer product in the world. And if if these chatbots and these generative AI tools and these LLMs take hold somewhere else that is at risk, we have to be seen as doing something.

Control.

Controlling them and talking to them. That's like and, you know, you look at Tesla and you're like, yeah. Okay. Fine. Whatever. Like, that's kind of their thing. They just say things and whatever. Maybe they make some of them happen. Apple that is not the reputation Apple wants to have. And I think Gruber's pointing, like, if you start to shift where it's like, okay.

Right. So my last couple thoughts on this. How much does it even matter to the real world? And I say the real world meaning outside of the tech bubble. Because when I think about what makes Apple profitable, it's selling hardware. And in this very moment where we had just a slew of new Macs like, we just gushed over a new Mac. We just talked about the new Macs.

It's basically old Mac with a new color and a new chip, but we gushed about it because it's amazing.

But it's amazing because we have this weird dichotomy right now where when it comes to hardware and the chips, the m three ultra, the m four max, the actual you know, the hardware of the MacBook Air, the iPad Pro, they have this incredible head start, like or or lead when it comes to this hardware stuff. I mean, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, say what you will, how similar it is, has an incredible camera every time I take photos and videos. It's amazing. Super fast. Like, I never worry or think about having a faster phone.

Yeah. Okay. That's fair. Yes. The hardware is great.

Here here's what I think would be viable for them to do. As was with the CSAM and some of those privacy and security concerns that, again, Apple promised a thing, said it was coming out, rolled it back. Said, actually, we're not gonna do that. Craig Federighi, do it with Joanna Stern, whoever, do it with us. We'll do an interview with you, Craig Federighi.

Absolutely. We

will have you on the show. And just say, listen. We're trying to make this the most private and secure AI assistant possible, and it's taking way longer than we thought. And so right now, you can integrate ChatGPT directly with your voice assistant, and we have all the best LLM apps and services. You have it on your iPhone already.

You know what they should have done is in October of was it October of twenty twenty two when ChatGPT took off? I think that sounds

about right.

They should have, like, the next morning got up and bought Anthropic. Like, just instant Insta buy. Just find the best one that's not OpenAI. Find it and just instantly just just take it.

Yeah. Like, do it.

Because you can't they can't they can't even the largest company in the world can't buy these companies now.

And it's also not like they would be hurting Siri's reputation by not delivering this because nobody likes Siri anyway. Like, my kids who try to yell at their HomePod minis all the time already at their age understand that it's not good, that it doesn't play the songs they wanna play. It can't do the things they want it to do. So it's not like there's high expectations for the voice assistant anyway. Just maybe make it good at what it's supposed to be doing right now and then worry about the contextual awareness later.

Well, and actually, some people pointed out that, like, the better thing to do would have been to just to start with making Siri better, period. Right? Like, start with that stuff. And even if it meant you had to have two separate thing, this is that was the problem. They tried to merge these it's like Right.

How does my friend know where to find it? Should I get the location for? Where do I get

the Exactly. And how does my friend even know that there's an Uber coming to

get them? Do they communicate with the Uber driver when they're at the wrong pickup place?

Anyway, so, like, all of these things. But I think the difference is you look at Amazon and you're like, there's a they didn't they announce, like, a drone that flies around your house a couple years ago? Like, people look at that and you're like, whatever. Vaporware. But Apple was promising, like, the most significant shift to how you merge voice assistants and LLMs

Right.

That no one else could do. Right? Google could do this because they make Android fine, but Google has other things. Like, Android is a much smaller part of its overall business considerations. Right? Right. Right? It's a search engine.

That's Also, no and nobody uses their first party phone, so they still have to work with Samsung or whoever to try and get that integrated.

True. So, anyway yeah.

So Apple, keep your promises, a. B, don't make promises you can't keep.

How about that?

Alright. And more exciting news, Pocket Cast is now on the web for everybody. Just wanna

I sent you a link from

it yesterday. I the link I have the link right there.

I went to Pocket. No. No. No. I mean, I sent you a pocket cast from the web link yesterday.

That's right. You shared something. Yes. That was nice. So pocket cast, listen. I use Apple Podcast, but is a pocket cast still the best podcast app? Just throwing it out there. I got worked up there, Jason. I got worked up.

That's what we're here for. This is great.

This is it. I will let's before we get to our bonus episode, we're gonna talk about tethering because everybody's yelling at me, if MacBook MacBooks don't need cellular. Okay. We're gonna get to that. But for our personal tech, I got a harrowing message on my in my Files app the other day. I opened the Files app on my iPhone, and it said iCloud storage is almost full. I have four terabytes of iCloud storage, Jason. Four terabytes.

What are you doing?

Listen, here's the thing. A time, in the day, or at least, I went all in on iCloud Drive. I don't use Dropbox. I don't use Google Drive on my stuff. I just use iCloud for everything. And I also share it with five other people. So there's six people total sharing this iCloud storage. And when I opened the Files app, I saw this message, which I had never seen before, which is terrifying. And then I looked at who's using all the space. I'm using 2.1 terabytes of of everything.

Well, let me just say, first of all Yes. Given the conversation we had about Mobile Meet, there's a 0% chance that I would use iCloud Drive as my primary cloud storage.

Like, even It's good. It's good now. This is another situation where it's actually good.

It's not good. It's it is it's it's not it's not better than Dropbox.

Not better than Dropbox.

So many ways. So it's like, so anyway, my iCloud Drive itself, I have a 68 gigs in the iCloud Drive. I don't even and you know what they are? It's like five folders from my Dropbox backed up in iCloud Drive. It's like, Wait.

But Sure.

Sure. Our iCloud photos is, like, 700 gigs. Our device backups is 275 gigs. It's it's like, honestly, there's just not we don't we we're using 1.9 terabytes of four terabytes now.

Oh, so

My Dropbox is 800 gigs. So if I was doing what you're doing, I still wouldn't. I'd be at, like, 2.7 of four. Right. So, like, you I don't know. You're saving a lot of you're some stuff you don't really need to save, I guess, but I don't I don't know.

So what but are you so when you get to that limit, are you going to upgrade to, like, the six terabytes?

Well, I'm hoping that when I get to that limit, several of my children can just be on their own iCloud storage plan. Pick them up.

Family plan.

Just you're done. No. I don't know. I mean, we're, like, almost to half. Now I guess before Apple won, we would have been at the limit because I'm at 1.9. Right? So and if I if that was the case, I probably would have just had to figure out I would have started deleting things from the iCloud drive, obviously, because I'm like, I guess I don't really need those things in there. Put them on a SSD or something. But I don't know. I just yeah.

You can get up to 12 terabytes. I have plenty of headroom if I needed to. I do wanna point out Tim Chaten on Mastodon. He does the iPad Pros podcast, which I've been on. It does great work. He sent a screenshot of his iCloud storage. His Apple Vision Pro backup is 720 gigs. That's three quarters of a terabyte just for the Apple Vision Pro backup.

There is literally not 720 gigs of content created for the Vision Pro.

So he went on to explain, apparently, he uses an app called MoonPlayer, and he has all of his three day three d Blu ray Disc RIPS, which is around 500 gigs of data. And because you can't pick and choose what apps are backed up in an iCloud backup, it has that entire, like, 500 gig library syncing to his iCloud backup. So I think Tim wins the most absurd Apple Vision Pro backup.

I would agree because, I mean, like, most people, your largest thing should be your iCloud photos.

That you would think. Yeah. You would think, which which one was mine? I had well, oh, I don't have it here. I think mine was like photo well, iCloud Drive was my biggest one, and then photos. I'm probably gonna upgrade to the second. Let's do it. We actually have hard drive hygiene as another personal tech segment for another day. That's an that's another day.

It is nice, though, that you can just kind of do this as you go. Right? So you get two terabytes if you subscribe to Apple one, and then we pay for the additional two terabytes of iCloud plus. Right. And then you can just be like, okay, I just need more. And, I could add I could so actually, this is interesting. I don't think you can get six. You would get eight.

I'll get eight. Okay.

Because so there's iCloud plus with two terabytes, iCloud plus with six terabytes, iCloud plus with 12 terabytes. But I think you still keep the two that come with Apple one.

Right. Right. Correct.

So you would actually have four, eight, or 14.

Now hold on. Now hold on a second. I have four I might upgrade this right now live on the show Right now.

It is it is a hefty increase. But I mean, honestly, six terabytes of storage for $29.99 a month is actually not that bad.

Back in the day, it used to be crazy. So right now I'm paying $10 a month just for the extra two terabytes on top of my Apple one. If I wanna get the six terabytes, it says six right here. Oh, no. No. Says because

still have two.

Right? It says your total storage will be eight terabytes. Right. Your total storage so that would be another $20 for four more terabytes because I have four terabytes right now paying $10 a month. Yep. If I pay 30, an extra $20 a month, I'd have eight terabytes. I'm literally about to do this right now. I'm literally about to do this right now. Six terabytes for a total of eight terabytes of storage I just tapped buy. Here we go.

I mean, the things that we're willing to throw money at to avoid pop up warnings on our on our devices.

I just there it is. Storage upgraded. There you go. I now have eight terabytes of storage.

This is a very expensive personal tech section.

I haven't bought a Mac Studio yet, though. Oh, now see, this is this this is this is why I do it. So now I can look at this line graph in my settings. Look at all that space.

Except for it says you're only using 3.6 terabytes, which is

Well, I deleted a bunch of I deleted a bunch of stuff. And here's the thing, I was deleting big files, and I have one Pixelmator project that is like my thumbnail Pixelmator project for YouTube. And I have a bunch of assets in there that I'll reuse sometimes, like the Apple home tag and the made from MagSafe tag. And as I was deleting big files trying to save space, I accidentally deleted that one. Thankfully, it was still in my trash.

That's amazing. Just literally doubled your iCloud storage.

Wow. Apple didn't have to do anything to make, the voice assistant contextually aware for me to spend more money just for iCloud storage. And I struggle to get people to convince people to pay for 200 gigs just so their phone could be backed up.

Well, don't have to do that anymore now. They'll give it to you for free for a phone back to upgrade your phone to the next one. Oh, So they'll give you a free backup so you can transfer it. But you're right. You don't get that backup on and on.

Right. Yeah. Alright. Well, I wanna talk about hotspotting versus built in cellular. We're gonna do that for our bonus episode. A couple things. Of course, leave us a five star rating and review, especially if you're in The US so we can get Us Five star rating. But any country, I would love to read reviews from all over the place. Cambodia, from Germany, from wherever. Would love to read them.

do I'm gonna call some people.

Yeah. Go ahead. Go call some people. Send an email list. And then, yeah, we just we appreciate that you listen. If you wanna support the show and get the bonus episodes and an ad free version, PrimaryTech.fm, click bonus episodes. You can get it there, and you'll get an ad free version of the video. I've been doing that every week, and you'll get the bonus episode via video as well. And that's PrimaryTech.fm. Click bonus episodes.